"An Island at War: Reframing Irish Political Violence, 1922-23"
Professor O’Halpin’s lecture challenges the conventional chronology of events in Ireland in 1922-23. The government’s attack on the Four Courts on 28 June 1922 is generally held to mark the start of the civil war. Yet hundreds of Irish civilians had already been killed in the preceding six months - far more than were to die during the civil war proper, which was almost exclusively a fight between two armed forces. And the majority of those civilian deaths were the result of targeted violence.
O’Halpin asks why political violence waned so swiftly and dramatically across the island following the armed conflict. It can be argued that the Cosgrave government’s comparatively tolerant treatment of its defeated foes explains why the new Free State stabilized so quickly. In Northern Ireland, by contrast, policy towards the nationalist minority generally remained unyielding, even when political violence had all but disappeared. But in Northern Ireland, as in the Free State, tranquility quickly succeeded chaos. Why?
For further background and a précis of O'Halpin's lecture, see this BC News story:
www.bc.edu/con...
For more information on the Burns Visiting Scholar in Irish Studies program, please visit: libguides.bc.e...
27 окт 2024
